Monday, April 11, 2011

Not Fun

Gammons before the game: "I think the fans will cheer Johnny Damon, I think they saw how personally he took the boos when he came here as a Yankee, bla bla bla, yadda yadda yadda." I avoid the Boston sports media. But some of them are hard to avoid, like what's said on the pre-game or what I read about on other blogs. But whenever I do hear them, I'm blown away by their complete ignorance. You know I could extend this paragraph to the end of the Internet so I will keep it short, by my lord, when are these fuckwads gonna learn? Even Remy and Don were amused at how we Sox fans "never forget." Yeah! We'll never for-fucking-get when the fucking face of our franchise who helped us finally defeat the evil rivals who had been mocking and demoralizing us for eighty fucking six goddamn fucking years went and signed on with them! I'll forget my name before I forget that shit. Jesus H. Christ. (I also heard from Cyn's blog that a certain reporter who claims to be a lifelong Sox fan--who just happened to cover the Yankees until he finally came to the Boston Globe and acted like he knew everything about Red Sox fans--was saying we should cheer Damon. Gee, what a surprise.)

Moving on to tonight's craziness:

Sometimes Kim & I will watch Jeopardy in the 7:30-8 time slot, of course going back to the game on commercials. I have no problem missing the occasional second inning while keeping tabs on the game and even having it DVR'd just in case some amazing thing happens. Tonight, it was 1-0 Devils when the interview portion of Jep started. This takes place during the first round. When the round ended, we went back to NESN and were shocked at the score: 7-0! Six runs in less than a round of Jeopardy. Unheard of. Tampa had scored a total of 20 runs in their first nine games, and they scored 16 tonight in the 16-5 blowout.

I have been thinking about the bad start, and I've said to a few real-life people that I think part of it has to do with the fact that when you're such a big favorite, teams are really gunning for you. That's one time when the media can affect the games. But only slightly, and we're good enough to rise above that, so I'm not gonna be using that as an excuse or anything. It's interesting to note, though, that the two teams that swept us to start the season currently have a combined record of 16-3. Then again, look at the record of the team we played tonight.

Youk, Mr. Perpetually Pissed, actually had a smile on his face after he hit a hard liner that got turned into a double play. That's a good indication of the whole "nothing's going right" thing for Youk, and this season so far in general. (Dice was shitty enough tonight where it had nothing to do with "breaks," though. He just got his ass whooped.)

Kelly and Cyn were at the game--I spotted them on TV right away, as they're just to the left of lefty hitters on their close-ups. And staying the whole game almost allowed them to see a cycle. But the local guy Fuld, needing only a single in the 9th, with his team up ten runs, hit one into the corner and did not stop at first. You really gotta hand it to them for sticking around, and to Fuld for just playing the game the way he knows how. He's gotta be cursing in his head rounding first, but you just have to keep going. He won my respect for doing that, and the respect of a lot of others I'm sure, and that's more important than being in the record book, especially in a cheap way. (And I'm not worried about that "respect the game" BS--I'm thinking of it like this: The game you're playing in is the only thing that matters. You're paid to try to win, not worry about any individual accomplishments. If you let up for reasons that have nothing to do with the only thing that matters, and then you go on to lose, you're gonna feel like a mighty large asshole--even in a case like this, where even your manager probably would have been fine with you just stopping at first and getting what might be the only chance of your life to get a cycle.)

Final random thought: Did I never think about the fact that there was a Jae Seo and a Jaso until now? TJ by me. It's like Matt Suhey/Matsui. Are there any more of those? Maybe a Sebastian Carlyastrzemski will get called up soon...

This game hurt. Hopefully Lester can give us a better Tuesday.I think it really hurt- really-really hurt- because Johnny D kept smirking from the dugout. Did you see that?Terrible. Something needs to be done about Dice-K ASAP.

Damon was smirking because his teammates were imitating the crowd by mock-booing him in the dugout.

I don't get booing Damon at this point. It made sense when he was in pinstripes, but he was dumped unceremoniously by them two years ago, and getting all worked up over him now just seems silly. Frankly, Johnny is dumb as a box of rocks, and a complete attention whore. I suspect what would bother him more than anything else these days would be for the Fenway crowd to have zero reaction when he's announced.

The bad start has been mostly the result of some horrendous starting pitching. Lester and Clay will be fine, but I don't expect Lackey or Dice to stop sucking any time soon. The big question is whether Sunday night means Beckett is back or not. Despite the hype, this was never a 100+ win team, but they should still be in the playoff hunt.

It's too bad DiceK sucks because I'm completely done with Lackey. I say we banish both of them to the pen or the Pawsox. Who takes their spots in the rotation? Who cares! Eventually we'll have to trade Ellsbury and maybe Lowrie for the best arm we can get at that price.

The worst thing about Damon's defection was that he lied - sayin he'd never be a yankee.

Hey Jere, when my Mom & I used to watch Jeopardy, we would guess the answer for the final question when all they give you is the category before the commercial break. We got it right a few times, too. Try it, it's fun.

AJM: Kim and Cyn and other say to just ignore Damon. My problem with that is that it doesn't adequately alert him of how much I want him to drop dead.

Mr. B: I've also never "warmed up" to Lackey even though I loved the acquisition at the time. But even though he seems to give up just enough to lose by 1, you gotta figure he'll get a lot of Ws even if he gives up 4 runs over 6 innings or whatever.

BFiW: I can assure you I have many odd Jeopardy traditions. :) Including the one you mentioned.

Isn't it amazing how any level of contact with the people journalists cover (even sports journalists) completely ruins their ability to report on them objectively? Johnny Damon might be alright in person, and it's not exactly a crime against humanity, but...seriously though, fuck that guy. Part of the reason people liked him when he was here was because he purported to share our fan mentality, especially by saying things like that he would never play for the MFYs. So it's not exactly rocket science that that betrayal has nothing to do with which team he's playing for *now*

Let's put it this way: do you hate Louie Tiant? No, of course not. He's the beloved El Tiante, and righly so. But Louie signed with the MFYs immediately after the traumatic '78 season, and pitched for them for two seasons (and was effective in '79, and good against the Sox in both '79 and '80). To top it all off, he made a commercial in the spring of '79 for Colonial Yankee Franks where he said the tag line "it's great to be with a wiener!" which can clearly be interpreted as a shot at the Sox.

Yeah, we all love Louie, and Damon comes off like a douche every time he opens his mouth these days, but judging them by their actions, you could argue that what Louie did was worse, kicking us while we were really down. At least Johnny played a key role in actually getting us over that mountaintop.

Okay, if that doesn't convince you, remember my original point: still hating and booing Damon probably doesn't bother him nearly as much as ignoring him would.

Well, yeah, at the time I was big time pissed at Louie. But I was also 14 years old. By 1980 he was pretty much hurting the Yanks more than helping them. By that point I was pretty much over it, and now I love the guy like everybody else and have taken my picture with him a couple of times at his cuban sandwich stand (he kinda hit on my wife the 2nd time). And yeah, I hated Damon back in '06, but that's faded, even after the dumb comments he made when rejecting the trade back to the Sox last year. You won't catch me cheering Johnny, but I'm still thankful for his contributions to the Sox' '04 championship, particularly those two huge game 7 dingers.

Mom here.1. If Johnny Damon said to the Yankees once signed, "By the way, I'm not cutting my hair," rather than becoming one of the wimp brigade who abided by George, the felon, Steinbrenner's rules of "neatness" which everyone with half a brain knows translated to, I don't want my boys to look like fags, then I might not boo him quite so vehemently.2. One of my favorite quiz show memories is Wheel of Fortune; category, "Place"; and up comes the following:_ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _and you shouting out immediately, "Memphis, Tennessee!" I'd say you were maybe ten years old at the time.

After posting about how Damon was essentially faking his sort of "fan" mindset, it occurred to me that that was one of the real things that set the 2004 team apart, and that only HE was lying about. Think about it: you had your pre-season Schilling signing antics where he was trashing the Yanks and chatting with fans on SOSH, Ortiz with his moving little pre-Game-4 billboard story, Nixon/Varitek/Wakefield as your core hometown-discount type players, and Pedro, Lowe, Millar & Arroyo, who all obviously wished they could have retired here. The only one who made a big show of belonging to this mindset, but who was thereafter exposed as having lied about it was Damon. Not getting why people would boo him for that is essentially just forgetting what made the 2004 team unique. Yes, going to your team's greatest rival after publicly denouncing them and saying that you never would is worse than if you just stated you'd play for whoever pays you the most, especially if it was one of the reasons people liked you in the first place.

Watch his reaction in his first at bat in a NY uniform at Fenway. Not only is he unhappy, he's clearly surprised. Probably also because of those pundits inexplicably saying he might be cheered. He might have been trying to hide his feelings but he can't do it -- that's wanting to be loved and not understanding why the crowd didn't buy his backpedaling on the whole "I won't ever play for NY" thing

And I'm not overthinking it by much. I just think the dynamic is interesting, not that significant. Even if the rest of the team hadn't been weirdly loyal, I'd still boo him forever for joining the yanks *right after* pretending to understand the rivalry.